


Going Down

by ravenousgrue



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Abuse, Blood, Come, Cruelty, Gore, Gross, Head trauma, Masturbation, Mucus, Other, Restraints, Swearing, Vomit, amateur surgery, cum, eye gore, probably some other stuff I'm forgetting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 03:11:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3159074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenousgrue/pseuds/ravenousgrue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This sort of thing isn't supposed to happen to guys like Rick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going Down

His biggest mistake was believing, even as he sat in a board room and listened to Harvey (Harv, The Harvster) try and throw him under a bus, that everything would be fine. _Try_ , he thought, because there was no way anyone was going to take the word of a science project over him. Yeah, the kid had accessed sensitive information, and sure, that had been a major security breach, but they paid him the way they did because he solved problems. It was a big problem to solve, but he'd already been cooking up some great ideas.  
  
Harvey didn’t like him, though. Didn't like that Rick was five years older but got pussy twenty years younger. Didn't like the way Rick pulled him up every time he said something stupid. Didn't like how Rick smirked at him, knowing he was better. Sure, Harvey was higher on the totem pole, but he wasn't killing it like Rick was. Rick went home and continued to kill it. Harvey, he assumed, got his sad little dick out and moaned to sloppy free homegrown porn.  
  
Harvey was _all over_ this one. If Rick didn't know better, he might even think that the board was listening. Hell, if he didn't know better, he'd be sweating bullets. Harvey was sweating. It turned whatever shitty cologne he was wearing up to eleven, that nasty flop sweat he had going on, and his eyes were bugging out a little. He had a fucking power point. Copies of emails. Some of the shit he was putting forth as evidence had nothing to do with the breach at all.  
  
He should've redirected more, maybe, but by the time he noticed the mood in the room had shifted, it was too late. The breach was very serious. The board felt he'd compromised crucial project data, and that he'd become compromised himself.  
  
This wasn't something they could let slide.  
  
First Rick had laughed, and he'd turned to shouting when they actually called some Tac guys in. Not the fat union fucks they paid to herd the droolers upstairs but the real deal. Guys in body armor armed with mean looking guns. He'd had some vague control over them downstairs. He could make suggestions, at least. Tac was a semi-separate entity, so while he could technically tell them to shoot somoene, they were within their right to tell his reedy civilian ass to settle the fuck down.  
  
They weren't listening to him at all right now.  
  
"You can't fuckin' do this!" Rick knew it was useless to struggle, but there was a raw panic welling up from the center of his brain. The place where he stored all the jazzy images of what they did downstairs. It didn't keep him awake at night by any stretch, but it wasn't something he wanted to experience. It didn't even seem real, that this was happening to him. This kind of shit didn’t happen to people like him, "I'm a goddamn executive! You can't do this!"  
  
"Fuck yourself, Trager," Harvey was grinning, beads of sweat standing out on his piggy face that he didn't bother to wipe away. A heavy bead of it gave in to gravity and wandered down the side of his face, sliding to the corner of his mouth where it was promptly lapped up, "Exposing classified information like that is a gross breach of contract. The second you did that, it was null and void."  
  
Rick struggled a little too hard and got an arm free. Not because he was stronger but because they weren't expecting any fight from a rangy older man. They were used to dealing with monsters.  
  
He was too startled to do anything when his arm popped free. For half a second he looked at it, watching his fingers curl into a fist almost all on their own, but that turned out to be a poor move. Someone shouted at him and his vision exploded in front of him, a splotchy array of dark colors.  
  
Some had hit him in the head with something. The point of contact felt strangely numb but everything around it burned or tingled or something – the blow had jumbled up his train of thought. He felt nothing at all for a length of time that didn't seem quite right and then suddenly his stomach was churning over.  
  
 _Fuck_ , he thought as he threw up on himself, _Fuck I just bought this suit_.  
  
He could afford to replace it but maybe he wasn't going to be in a position to buy a new one. Nah, they were just going to throw him out was all. Toss him out on the front lawn like it was a comic strip. Fluorescent lights moved over head and people spoke but not to him. His limbs were restrained and moving made him feel sick. Even if he wasn't moving, someone was moving him.  
  
Rick fought the urge to close his eyes. He knew he should've done a line or two before the meeting, top things off, lubricate the old charm, but maybe that wouldn't have made a difference in the end.  
  
They were going for the executive elevator, not the front door. The executive elevator only went _down_. Rick didn't _want_ to go down. No fucking way no way no how. There was nothing down there he wanted to be involved in right now. Not like this. Not with his head swimming and his stomach in a hard knot.  
  
Rick tried to get his legs under him, the slick soles of his shoes scraping uselessly on the aging wood floor. Maybe if he was wearing some ratty sneakers he'd get some purchase but nah, he was dressed to the nines today, wearing shoes that perfectly communicated just how much money he had to burn. Didn't mean anything today, did it? Didn't mean shit. But it should have. It should have meant something, because he wasn't supposed to be in this position.  
  
 _He_ threw people downstairs as punishment but he was above it. That's what made it easy, knowing that he wasn't going to be in that position. When he went downstairs, it was because it was his job to do it. He got paid big money to go down there and keep shit running smoothly.  
  
"Can't," he said, trying to struggle again when they were in the elevator, "Can't do this t'me can't."  
  
They didn't even hit him again, didn't even tell him to shut up. Rick felt like he could probably stand and walk on his own now, but was that the sort of man he was? Was he the sort of man who faced a grim fate on his own two feet, head held high even as vomit dried on his chin? Thinking about his puke made him aware of the taste of it in his mouth but he didn't dare spit. He'd throw up again if he spit. He might throw up again anyway. The nausea was relentless.  
  
Fuck it. They could drag him. This bullshit had to come to a stop at some point. There was no way this was actually happening. Harvey hated him, sure, but they weren't going to have him plugged into that fucking nightmare machine over a _grudge_ , right? They had to know that the breach was a hoax, _right_? Someone who rattled off enough crazy shit was gonna hit the mark eventually. Even conspiracy theorists sometimes got a fact or two right. Didn't mean they were right. Didn't mean they weren't nuts.  
  
End of the line: they tossed him into one of the intake rooms. There was two way glass but all Rick saw for a second was the floor, his glasses pressing uncomfortably against his face. They were wire frames, and he could feel them bend from the impact. They'd sit wrong on his face now. It was a fucking pain to get them back into the right position. His vision would be not-quite-right until he took them to the optician to adjust and refit them.  
  
He wasn't in restraints, but he was too slow to get to his feet. By the time he got to the door it was already closed. The quick movement was too much and he threw up again, mostly gagging on his own bile, his stomach heaving angrily. _This is what you get for having a martini for lunch_ , his stomach seemed to scold him, _you stupid fucker_. _Have a couple fucking saltines next time. Maybe eat the olives they put in the damn thing._  
  
Rick spit one, twice, heaved again, but this time didn't bring up anything but a burning, sick taste in the back of his throat. He spit one more time and turned his head, still leaning against the door with both hands, latched onto the wall like a gecko on a window. His body felt very heavy, and he felt like his thoughts weren't quite back on their rails. Concussion, maybe. Shit.  
  
"Hey," he croaked, using his long legs to pull him along the wall, towards where he knew the two way glass was, "Hey, okay, I get it. This ain't funny anymore. You got plenty of shit on me now, huh? Ha ha, I puked everywhere. Great. Lemme the fuck out. Some of us actually got work to do around here."  
  
Nothing. Which was part of it. They wanted him real wound up. Wanted to get him on camera saying something incriminating. Maybe they wanted him to cry and beg. Throw it in his face whenever he pointed out what a fucking idiot Harvey was or how Blaire's voice cracked like he was a prepubescent boy when he got excited. Sure, Trager, maybe you're right, but you also cried like a bitch when you thought we were actually going to plug you into the Engine.  
  
Rick knew they wouldn't. Maybe this place was already a black hole for capital, but why waste _more_ on someone who wasn't fit to be put into the damn thing? Why bother? The only reason they funded it was because the end results, a biological weapon that was nigh impossible to combat, would _more_ than compensate for it being a multi-million dollar money sink. They wouldn't even get any good data from Rick, wouldn’t further any research. Patients had to be prepped and broken down. Rick knew because he'd run the numbers himself. He'd done a fucking powerpoint presentation on suitable candidates, how to prep suitable candidates, how to get the best numbers. They weren't under pressure to produce anything in the short term but Rick wasn't the kinda guy to just sit on his ass and do nothing. He liked things to work. He wanted to see all the gears spinning, all the whistles and bells making a big racket, wanted to get those pats on the back. Nice work, Trager. How about another raise? Maybe some more stock options. Heck! What are we thinking? You should be on the board, good buddy.  
  
 _That_ shit. _That_ old chestnut. That's why he had it out for Harvey. Harvey was younger, stupider, and lazier than he was, but the Harvster was on the board because that's the kind of person who did well on the board. They got more out of Rick. They knew he did his best work in the trenches -- as much as an executive could be in the trenches -- and so they kept him there. He was getting to be That Age, after all. If they put him on the board they'd never get rid of him. Keep him in one spot, though, maybe he'd just take his money and go. Better that than paying him more and more every year until he finally keeled over.  
  
Murkoff was a corporation at the end of the day. They wanted to make money. That's all a corporation was, a machine for squeezing money out of people. Rick had always considered himself an engineer in that regard, one of the people who made sure the machine did the optimum amount of squeezing, but he was just another gear. A gear that maintained itself, how useful was that? Fucking idiot. Fucking _stupid_. He'd had so many chances to fuck over Harvey but he'd had his blinders on, enjoying his bump in pay and the pleasure of watching things run more smoothly with his new policies. _Suck on this, Harvey_ , he'd thought.  
  
It was Rick who'd been doing the sucking all along.  
  
"Lemme outta here," Rick snarled, heaving his body up against the 'mirror' where he knew a couple of guys were. Probably not Harvey, he was still in the board room, but they'd have a video feed up there. They'd still be watching, "Who's back there, huh? Walsh? Fuckin' Mitchell? Jokes over, assholes. I got a fuckin' concussion and this shit ain't funny anymore."  
  
Rick flashed them a smile, his teeth a little crooked, a little yellow. Even though they were clean he felt like they were covered in a visible film, the bacteria from his guts wriggling around on this new and exciting surface, enjoying their new feast.  
  
He slammed a palm flat against the glass with all the force he could muster, which wasn't all that much when most of his energy was devoted to keeping him upright.  
  
"This s‘ bullshit," he slurred. Rick could hear the slur and he tried to correct for it, but he had no idea if he was succeeding or not, "It's bullshit, I wanna call my lawyer. I want this shit cleared up. I didn't leak anything. Why the fuck would I leak anything? I don't even have direct access to Wernicke's personal Fleshlight, how the fuck would I even--?"  
  
The door opened again and Rick turned. Too fast. Too fucking fast; he was on his hands and knees now, the entire room rolling to the side and nearly dumping him down onto his side along with it. His stomach heaved, but there was nothing to bring up. The first thing he saw was paper booties. Sterile booties covering some white orthopedic trainers. Like what the orderlies wore all the time. They were on the feet all damn day, more or less. It was a demanding job. High turnover, especially upstairs.  
  
Downstairs was where they had the guys who could handle it.  
  
Rick's eyes moved up and he made eye contact with one of them. He recognized the guy. Good worker. Kept his head down. Never complained, at least not in earshot of anyone that mattered. Rick had picked him to be a downstairs guy from the start and it'd paid off.  
  
There were two other orderlies with him. One of them had a metal cart.  
  
"Mr. Trager, could you disrobe for me, please?" Andrew asked. It wasn't polite, though. There was nothing polite about the way he used _'Mister'_ or how he said _'please'_. It was just part of procedure. They were just an assembly of words rubber stamped by the board so if something went wrong, they could go ah! Well! Maybe if you were a little more _polite_ , the patient wouldn't have tried to bite off your ear!  
  
"Fuck you," Rick said. But it wasn't his voice. It was someone else saying it, someone scared. Someone terrified beyond words. Rick wasn't scared because this wasn't happening to him. Any second now it was going to stop and they were going to laugh at him and circulate some humiliating footage, but Rick could handle that.  
  
He could handle just about anything as long as this moment in particular wasn't real.  
  
"Please cooperate, Mr. Trager," Andrew said. There was a hint of weariness in his voice. Not out of regret or resignation, but just because he hadn't slept well. They'd all been putting in overtime lately -- rubberstamped by Rick -- to really crack down on isolating what made some of their candidates burn out so damn fast. They had an almost limitless supply of meat to grind here, but _almost_ was the key word. And not everyone worked out, further reducing the pool of useful bodies, "Or we'll have to make you cooperate."  
  
Rick struggled to get to his feet, trying to haul himself up along the wall, but the room stayed sideways and he couldn't get his feet under him.  
  
"You stay the fuck away from me," Rick said, "You know who I am? I'm the fucking head of R &D! I got you this fucking job!"  
  
Andrew raised his eyebrows, just a fraction, and Rick realized that hadn't helped his case. Rick had gotten him a harder position with terrible hours. Way better pay, the guy wouldn't have to work again probably, but being worked like a dog probably didn't sit well some days.  
  
"Just get the fuck outta here, the joke's over," Rick said. He was scooting away from Andrew -- who hadn't moved, and neither had his buddies -- on his side, his head feeling like it weighed a million pounds, his guts trying to find something else to bring up, "The joke's over! I ain't laughin'! This is _bullshit_! You can't _do_ this to me, I'm--! I'm fucking _important_!"  
  
It all sounded so pathetic, even to him, and Rick started to laugh. Oh yeah, he was _so_ fucking important. He worked in a hole in the ground in fucking Colorado. He was just a corporate version of Andrew, noticed for his hard work and put in a job to maximize his abilities to keep him busy. Keep him from thinking too hard about how he was probably underpaid and overworked.  
  
People who got satisfaction from doing their work were a corporation’s _favorite_ sort of cog. The sort of cog that greased itself and didn't worry about what that grease was made out of. Didn't matter, so long as they got that grease.  
  
Rick's whole body jammed to a halt as he wedged himself into a corner. He wasn't a small man. Not _ripped_ , but he was tall, and he had a breadth of shoulder that gave him some presence. He felt like he was fourteen again, all elbows and knees, and he jammed his knee under his chin in an attempt to make himself smaller and harder to grab, biting down on his own tongue.  
  
"Get him," Andrew said, making a bored gesture while he went over to the cart, "Stand him up."  
  
"Should we sedate him?"  
  
Andrew shrugged.  
  
"Don't you fuckin _dare_ ," Rick said, but he had no idea which idea he was protesting and it was a toothless threat besides. He wasn't in charge here. He was worth millions, literal millions at this point in his life, and it meant nothing. _Money meant nothing_.  
  
His money meant nothing and it he was completely _fucked_.  
  
The orderlies stood him up and dragged him back towards the middle of the room. No Tac guys at all. He hadn't been classified as any kind of threat. Why would they, right? What was he going to do, throw up on them? That was hardly the worst thing that had happened to any of these guys.  
  
Andrew had a pair of orange-handled fabric scissors, a staple of middle America's junk drawers, and he started to cut off Rick's suit.  
  
"Quit it," Rick hissed, trying to shy away from the cold metal. It was too blunt to do more than graze his skin, but fuck if it didn’t make his skin crawl, "I can fuckin' undress."  
  
Andrew said nothing, although he did give him a _look_. The room was still sideways, but maybe it was because his glasses were sideways. Probably part of his nausea problem, although the concussion was the top contributor. The wire frames were all bent to fuck from him flopping around the room like a sack of drunk cats. He'd tried out the thicker frames once, thinking it'd make him look younger, but they had just made him look like an asshole. Which he kinda _was_ , but _hey_ , no sense advertising it right off the bat.  
  
 _Snip, snip, snip_ , and Rick imagined the blades gliding through his savings and his credit cards and his stock options. A wardrobe full of tailored suits and expensive shoes and ties, a costume wardrobe part of an elaborate show he'd thought he'd been a permanent cast member on.  
  
It was cold in the intake room, and his bare skin withdrew from it, gooseflesh rising. They were cutting off the clothes so they could keep control of him, but it was stupid. There was no reason not to just let him disrobe, other than the fact that he probably couldn't stand up straight. Which, okay, _was_ a decent reason, but being undressed with scissors was a special kind of humiliating.  
  
 _Shit_ , it was cold in here. It was colder where his puke had soaked through and gotten onto his skin and pretty soon he was down to his boxers. Nice ones. Everything he was wearing was nice and now it was in tatters or in a little tray. Rick didn't protest when they slid off his watch and he barely flinched when they jerked his boxers off (those weren't regulation for patients, something nasty hissed in the back of his head) but when Andrew pulled his glasses off his entire body jackknifed, almost catching the orderlies off guard. Almost.  
  
"I need those to fuckin' see!"  
  
Andrew folded them and placed them in the tray, and Rick squinted, his mouth pulled into an ugly grimace. Everything was a big fuzzy blur now. This was _happening_. This was happening to _him_. Couldn't let new downstairs patients have shit like glasses until they were sure they wouldn't harm themselves. Sure it was disorienting and terrifying to not be able to see but that was kind of part of the process.  
  
No matter how hard he squinted, he couldn't see what Andrew was doing now, everything blown out, just a slurry of dingy white with a flare of malevolent blue. His eyesight had never been great, but it was easy to forget when you had glasses. It was easy to take them for granted even if the prescription was a year out of date, because even an old prescription still meant you could see the world.  
  
Not being able to see made something give and Rick struggled again, kicking his long legs and trying to haul his arms out of the orderlies tight grips.  
  
"Get your fucking hands off of me!" he was trying to use his best _'no YOU listen'_ voice. Usually he was a _very_ cool cat, dealt with even the most out of control dude with a smile, but he couldn't get there. How could he? He was naked and Andrew was coming at him with... what? What was it?  
  
Andrew struck him, an open faced smack, and the blow sent his brain into fucking orbit. It certainly did the job of stunning him, and Rick had a moment to wonder if it was a good idea to hit someone with a concussion.  
  
Not that it mattered. So long as he was alive and had brain activity, he could go into the machine. The orderlies held him tight and Andrew moved in close, reaching an arm around behind him and grasping his ponytail. Rick knew it wasn't the best look for a man his age or a man with his hairline, but hey, even _he_ was prey to the desperate vanity of someone who wasn't quite as young as they remembered being. He figured he'd grow it out, compensate for the steady retreat up top, and it hadn't really hurt his game. Not much could when it was obvious how much fucking money you made, though. Who was going to complain? The thing was, he kinda _liked_ it long. He'd always kept it short so as to blend in with the pack, but at the top of the food chain (or what he'd perceived as the top, because where the fuck was he _now_?) he'd figured what the hell. Grow it out. Kinda added to his whole casual fuck-you-I'll-throw-you-downstairs-and-smile vibe, and he had made a real point to cultivate it. Maybe taking a grown man with a ponytail seriously wasn't someone's first instinct, but it threw them off so he could correct them real quick. A shortcut to social dominance.  
  
Now it was a handhold. Andrew pulled on it, forcing Rick's head back at an angle that made his skull _throb_. He was pulling on hairs that were attached to whatever welt was blossoming where he'd been jammed with the butt of a rifle or punched or whatever the fuck he'd been hit with, and he squawked in protest.  
  
Lots of hair was a pain when you were plugging guys into the Engine. That shit got everywhere, clogged up intakes, make the electrodes harder to stick, and was just plain unhygienic when they had to surgically install plugs in some of their regulars. What Andrew had grabbed were some cordless hair clippers, and he thumbed it on, the tinny buzz of the thing boring into Rick's ear.  
  
He jerked his head away on instinct but all he did was make himself yelp in pain and make Andrew -- who was now close enough for Rick to see his expressions and smell what he had for lunch, some kind of nasty fucking egg salad sandwich -- give him an impatient look.  
  
"Let's not make a scene, Mr. Trager," Andrew said, "Hold still."  
  
The buzzing was muffled by his hair and Rick grit his teeth. Maybe the noise was quieter but he could feel it now, the vibration rattling his already rattled brains. Any attempt to move his head was met with more pain, and he hissed when Andrew started to plow the clippers over the welt on the back of his head with as much force as he'd been using on the rest of his scalp.  
  
Well, he'd been meaning to cut it anyway, so it shouldn't have been bothering him, but he was naked and shaved and painfully aware of how vulnerable he was. He had a head injury, a serious one, but nobody was all that concerned about it. His hair was on the floor now, long strands of iron grey coiled in a halo around his feet. There was no fanfare, no ceremony. He was being processed like any other patient.  
  
This wasn't a joke. He wasn't going to go back upstairs. They weren't going to give him his glasses back. Rick felt a weird surge of unfamiliar emotion and he swallowed it, unsure of what would happen if he tried to vocalize it. He couldn't show any weakness, a thought that almost made him laugh. Wasn't he the _picture_ of weakness? Barely on his own feet, shaved bald, his aging body on full display, the cold room making his balls try and retreat to higher ground. He wasn't aging as gracefully as he'd like. It was easy to ignore when you were high or when it didn't matter if maybe you had some extra wrinkles these days and maybe the metabolism that kept your rail thin up through your thirties was starting to give out on you because hey! Money compensated for a ton of shit!  
  
It didn't mean anything now. The orderlies would probably split what was in his wallet and the rest of his assets would either be absorbed by the company or maybe handed off to his replacement. Compensation for coming in late and having to clean up a big fucking mess.  
  
But there _wasn't_ a mess. He hadn't _done_ anything. He didn't even think there was a leak, just a crazy fucking kid who maybe overheard his name and decided he'd incorporate him into his delusions. This was all a huge mistake. This was bullshit. This didn't happen to people like him. It didn't but it was and there was nothing he could do about it.  
  
Once he fully shorn they stuffed him into some scratchy clothes. He'd actually heard some patients complain about it, even seen them itching, but he'd always assumed they were detoxing or had some kind of _'I see bugs everywhere!_ ' sort of problem. The material was rough and it made his skin crawl, and he almost wished he was naked again, and what a thought _that_ was.  
  
"Can he stand?"  
  
"I can stand," Rick muttered, his tone mutinous and void of threat. One of the orderlies eased off his grip, and then the other, and Rick took his full weight. For a second, before the room still fell sideways and he started to tip in the opposite direction and they caught him.  
  
"He's still pretty fucked up," one the orderlies said.  
  
"Drag him."  
  
"Clinic first," Rick said, "It's procedure. Clinic fuckin' _first_ I got a goddamn _concussion_."  
  
Nobody said anything. They were ignoring him. That was procedure, too: don't engage a raving patient. Don't encourage them. Isolate them. Maybe make them think all of it was in their head. It wasn't, though. Rick wanted it to be, but this was real. This was happening to him. He woke up this morning, told the half-asleep woman in his bed not to do all his coke while he was gone, grabbed a McMuffin and a long black from Mickey D’s  and rolled into work exactly on time, his Audi covered in mud from the long drive up the mountain.  
  
He’d had every intention of fucking that girl again if she was still hanging around, and he had been betting she would be. Rick could've retired at forty but he kept at it. Just a little more money couldn't hurt. Just a little more squirreled away for retirement. Fifty, he'd decided in his head. Fifty and he'd resign. This gig was a pretty decent one for that. Hazard pay, lots of stock options. Technically the chance to be elected to the board, but since they’d kept dangling that carrot, he was just going to take the money and run.  
  
 _Was_. He _was_ going to. Rick didn't even know the name of the girl in his bed. Was she still in it? Maybe. Maybe she was. Rick was being dragged down a hallway and he closed his eyes, because he couldn't see shit anyway and the carved stone around them was all the same color. Maybe she was wearing one of his shirts and tentatively poking around. Not snooping, not really, but just getting a feel for things. He had money, maybe he was worth more than one night of her time.  
  
Maybe she'd make herself coffee and breakfast and just hang out. She had a great ass. A little light on the tits but surgery could fix that right up if she wanted. Maybe if she asked just the right way, had her hands in the right place. Someone grabbed the back of his collar and tossed him into a cell, slamming the door behind him, and he thought about how she'd made the effort to protest him waking up and leaving. _Come back to bed_ , she'd crooned, not really meaning it. He'd appreciated it, though, but _nah sweetheart, I gotta bring home the bacon_.  
  
The cell was padded on all sides and there was a cot and a toilet and nothing else and she'd ridden him like a cowgirl last night. He'd thought she'd really play it up, yowl a lot, put on a show, but she'd seemed pretty earnest about fucking, more grunts and hisses than melodramatic shouts.  
  
He needed to wash the bile out of his mouth, to get rid of the taste, and as he scooped up toilet water in his hands he remembered how she'd come up to him at the bar. She knew money when she saw it, knew what he was there for. He liked that. Usually he was the one who made the moves -- no sense being a sleazy old man if you couldn't play your part -- and he had liked how bold she was.  
  
The toilet water had a metallic taste, but it was cool, and he spit it back out. Then he threw up again, and a choked sob came after, his hands gripping the stainless steel.  
  
Everything from last night was vivid in his mind but no matter how tightly he gripped it, it was already sliding away. He'd thrown up in his water source, and it felt like there was a railroad spike in the very centre of his brain. And it wasn't just sitting there, either. It was twisting in slow, uneven circles, pulping up the already bruised and battered grey meat around it.  
  
He wasn't going to get out of here. He was wearing itchy pajamas, he couldn't see, he had an untreated concussion and it wasn't a joke. Rick had woken up with everything and now he had nothing. _Was_ nothing.  
  
Part of him wanted to sleep. The urge was there, but the knowledge that he might not wake up was a new level of gut churning nausea. Maybe that would be better. But what if they weren't putting him in the Engine? What if they were just going to fuck with him a little?  
  
Rick let out a loud caw of laughter, startling himself. He wasn't that fucking stupid. Of course they were going to put him in the Engine. If they weren't, they wouldn't have brought him downstairs. He was a candidate now.  
  
He tried to rake his fingers through his hair and let out a low moan when his fingers skidded across stubble and the vaguely loose skin of a man getting too old to not take hydration seriously.  
  
Rick solemnly flushed the toilet and sat next to it, resting his throbbing head against the soft wall and staring at nothing in particular. Even if he could see, there would be nothing to see. Just dingy walls and a toilet and a cot.  
  
He tried to picture the girl again but even in his imagination she'd gotten bored and left. She'd grabbed a baggie of coke for her trouble, maybe slipped herself a hundred or two he'd forgotten about in the coat he'd worn last night, and let herself out.  
  
She probably didn't remember his name, either.  
  
Rick didn't know how long he was in the cell. They never turned out the lights (that one had been his idea because he'd seen some documentary about some Russian supermax) and didn't do physical checks on him. Just the camera feed kept an eye on him. He wasn't worth checking on in person.  
  
He slipped in and out of consciousness a few times, or he thought he did. Occasionally his whole body would jolt and he'd gasp for air and forget where he was and it'd all come rushing back. How long had he been here? He checked for his phone more than once. He kept touching his head, trailing his fingertips over the short bristles. What did he look like with a shaved head? Like shit, probably.  
  
Rick eventually crawled over to his cot, hoping to ease the incessant pounding in his skull, hoping to find some kind of comfort in a cell designed to deny it. Not something he'd signed off on. That had been in place already when he'd showed up. Falling asleep was just something that was going to happen or it wasn't. He'd wake up or he wouldn't.  
  
He hated himself a little for not falling asleep. Rick knew what was coming but he couldn't do it. He could let his eyes close, maybe slip into a coma, just be a useless piece of meat. Not even worth stringing up to life support. They'd tried putting coma patients in the Engine and it wasn't good enough. They needed to be awake, to understand their suffering. To see what it was doing to them. To know it was coming.  
  
The door opened and he tried to sink down into the mattress somehow, and for a moment he even considered pretending to be asleep. Like they'd throw their hands up and leave.  
  
"Get him up," someone ordered, and rough hands obeyed. Being jolted upright made him heave, but there was nothing left to come up. Nothing but desperate gagging sounds that were dangerously close to sobs.  
  
Rick tried to get his feet under him but he was quick to give up. His head felt like it weighed a ton and he let it loll to the side. Why bother? Why make it easy? He'd always wondered why patients acted like such melodramatic assholes and now he understood so much more than he ever wanted to. _Never me_ , he'd thought. _I'd fight em the whole time. Give em hell to the last breath_.  
  
Now he just wanted them to leave him alone. To give him his glasses back and leave him alone. His head felt stuffed with the material his crazy guy jim-jams were made of and it was fucking awful and he should have fell asleep but he didn't want to die. He knew he'd want to later, he knew he'd beg for it when he had his first jaunt in the Engine, but he couldn't conceive of it. He'd had the numbers in front of his face. He'd crunched them himself, he'd read the reports. Fuck, he'd sipped coffee and watched them put guys through their paces, but it still wasn't enough for him to want to die.  
  
Rick wondered if deep down he was a coward. Or stupid. Or both. Both was a strong possibility.  
  
They dragged him into the clinic and he got a little bit of his groove back, the antiseptic smell a shock to his system. All he'd been smelling for however long was himself. Sweat and bile and terror and the remnants of the Old Spice deodorant he'd slapped on. Twenty Four hour. An antiperspirant designed for the sort of sweat only a man could work up. Like Rick was going to be climbing around in the rigging of the ship on the roll-on, pouring sweat in the beating sun and not just sitting in his office thinking about going home early because it was pretty easy to delegate work in this environment. Shit was too dangerous for people to fuck it up so he didn't have to worry.  
  
When they started to strap him down to a metal table, that snapped him back to the now.  
  
"Hey," Rick said. Was he slurring? He didn't think he was anymore. That was probably a good sign. If he could just think straight, maybe he could pull off some kind of Hail Mary, get the fuck out of this mess, "Hey, gimme my fuckin' glasses back. I can't goddamn see. You can at least do that for me, you fuckin' -- who is that? Is that Steve? Steve, you fucker. I looked at the pictures of your ugly baby so many goddamn times. Just bring me my glasses. You can at least do that, right? Can I get a little special treatment? You know me. You know me, Steve, goddammit! It's Rick Trager! It's me! Look at me you son of a bitch!!"  
  
At some point he'd lost command of his schmoozing and it'd turned into enraged pleas. _Whoops!_  
  
"You can't let them do this to me! This ain’t right! You gotta help me!" there were at least three people puttering around the room, but someone strapped his head down, and his blurry vision was limited to the goddamn ceiling, "I'll pay for your kid to go to college, Steve. That shit is pricey. You gotta know the right people. You gotta-"  
  
"You just don't know when to shut up, do you?"  
  
Rick knew that voice anywhere, and anger he didn't realize he'd been storing up surged up through his pleading, shoving it aside.  
  
"Harvey, you mother _fucker_. You know I didn't leak anything! You know this is bullshit!"  
  
"Is it, _Dick_?"   
  
Rick tried to turn his head, strained his eyes, but he couldn't see Harvey with his head strapped down. Fucking Harvey. He _hated_ that nickname. Some people took it in stride but Rick was at a point in his life where he shouldn't have to. Or he had been. So much past tense. His life was in past tense, now. Whatever this was, it wasn't going to count as his life. Once you were down here you had fewer rights than a corpse.  
  
"What the fuck are you doing down here anyway? They wouldn't give you clearance just to _gloat_."  
  
There were video cameras for that. That Harvey was down here at all strained protocol. Even Blaire had limited access to the basement. Plausible deniability for the front man of a charitable organization and all that. He didn't need to know what they were doing down here: he just had to make sure he smiled big at charity events and charmed any press that came sniffing around. They loved stories about helpless people being abused. It was one of only reasons to even bother with a place like this. He wondered if the irony of that ever bothered them.  
  
It was probably hard to be bothered if you had a Pulitzer.  
  
"Well I was going over policy, Dick," Harvey said. His voice was behind him now, and there was motion out of the corner of his eye. Rick couldn't turn his head to see what had happened, but he thought maybe Harvey had his hands on the table on either side of him, "And you know what's important? For candidates to have some fractures. You know, something we can slip a chisel into and pound on. Really break things apart."  
  
Rick said nothing. He knew that already. Of course he did. That had been in place from day one. They needed unstable minds to plug into the thing. He knew what Harvey was suggesting, but he didn't really know what his point was. Everyone they brought down here was pre-broken, either right on intake or after a few months upstairs. Rick had a concussion and he was pretty fucked up, but he didn't know about _broken_.  
  
His guess about the position of Harvey's hands was confirmed when he felt them press against his cheeks, rubbing them in hard circles, pressing his cheeks against his teeth. Rick hissed and clenched his jaw, but it was all he could do. His hands were sweaty.  
  
"Turns out there really isn't any paperwork protecting people from making the actual _fractures_ down here," Harvey said, "Kind of an oversight, but! There's a way around it. I'm not liable for shit down here because I'm not down here. You pickin' up what I'm puttin' down, Dicky?"  
  
His mimicry of Rick's drawl made Rick's teeth grind and he continued to say nothing. Harvey didn't have it in him to _fracture_ someone, to break someone down until they were suitable. Harvey was a fat piece of shit who _maybe_ jerked off to snuff porn but didn't have the guts to do more than that. There was no fucking way.  
  
Harvey didn't seem bothered by Rick's silence, and that bothered Rick. He wished it didn't, but he wanted at least some kind of upper hand. Some kind of control over Harvey's behavior. He'd been able to play the guy like a fiddle before, and now he was just sitting here. _Laying here_. At his fucking mercy.  
  
"So I've got the impression that you're pretty upset about your glasses, Dick," Harvey slapped Rick's cheeks and pulled his hands away, "That must be shitty, huh? To not be able to see? But I mean, think of it this way: you aren't _blind_ , right? That would be _way_ worse. No color, no shapes at all. Just _darkness_. I mean, maybe that would help you appreciate what you have more though, right? Maybe if you were actually blind, you'd have something to complain about.”  
  
Rick continued his silence, but it was different now. He’d been stewing in his own rage, trying not to give Harvey the satisfaction. Now he was stock still, his expression something that he hoped was neutral. Anything to not incense Harvey further. He wouldn't go through with it, though. Sure, all of them were capable of throwing people down here. It was easy. Not everyone could watch what happened, though. Some board members threw up or looked away, pretending they were bored and looking at their phones even though there was no fucking reception underneath a mountain.  
  
Harvey was one of the guys who could watch, but that didn't mean anything. It was one thing to _watch_ , and another to _do_. He wasn't going to do shit. Or maybe he'd try but he'd fuck it up. Because Harvey was a lazy fuck-up who was on the board because daddy was a big time shareholder. He'd be a manager of an Applebee's without his father.  
  
But he _had_ his father, didn't he? All the insults in the world didn't change the fact that Rick had clawed and connived and backstabbed his way to his position while Harvey had been able to conserve his energy and goodwill. He wasn't incompetent, Rick just hated his path because it was shorter. He hated Harvey because he envied how much easier it had been for him.  
  
Metallic clinking stirred Rick from his poorly timed introspection. He'd had plenty of time to think in his cell, but only now was his mind racing. Maybe he had slept and not realized it. Maybe not thinking had been his way of (not) coping with the situation.  
  
Harvey placed a hand on his cheek again, his left one, and the other remained in limbo, presumably wielding something unpleasant. Or maybe not. Harvey didn't have the guts.  
  
A silent exchange happened, because there were shuffling feet and then the sound of a door closing.  
  
"Just you and me, Dick. Just you and me and _this_."  
  
Rick flinched as something jerked past his peripheral vision and then hovered very close to his eye. It was close enough for him to see it and his right eye twitched, needing to keep track of the threat but also not very eager to leave itself open to attack.  
  
Not that it would matter. A scalpel wasn't going to have trouble with an eyelid.  
  
Harvey let out a thin little laugh that didn't suit his frame and pulled the scalpel away. Rick's mouth worked soundlessly as he wrestled with a variety of things. Should he beg him not to do it? Insult him? Say nothing at all?  
  
"I know you're pissed I got the board position and you didn't," Harvey said, "And I know you're the one who started that fucking joke about how I only jerk off with my thumb and index finger _. Tryhard Harv_. Everyone thinks you're so fucking cool, Dick, but you know what? You aren't. You're an aging hipster who hit a brick wall. You act like you're so above it, that you're happy with what you have, but I know it eats you up that I have a seat on the board and you don't. It doesn't matter how many co-eds you fuck or how many lines you snort off a hooker’s dick, because at the end of the day I'm better than you. At the end of the day, I win. I win, Dick, not you."  
  
"Didja get a blue ribbon and a trophy you fat fuck?" Rick couldn't help it. He just could not let that pissy little speech go unaddressed, "Prize hog at the county fair? Didja get a fuckin' spider to write SOME PIG over your sta-- _AHH_!"  
  
Even when the scalpel retreated, Rick didn't think anything of it. For a wild moment he even thought he'd gotten some traction, gotten some control back.  
  
Harvey had stabbed it into his shoulder. Nowhere in particular, but it fucking _hurt_. Blood was already making the itchy cloth stick to his skin, and Rick yelped again when Harvey yanked it out, probably doing more damage on the way out than on the way in. Rick's entire body was a live wire now, his fingers scratching uselessly at the metal table his toes flexing as every part of him tried to find some little sliver of purchase.  
  
"I win!" Harvey said gleefully, wiping the scalpel off on Rick's face. He flinched at the slight sting the blade caused, and his stomach knotted all over again. Was the blood running down his cheek from his shoulder, or was Harvey opening up wounds? The scalpel was sharp. It was hard to say, "I win and you lose. I won before we even met, Dick. I-"  
  
"It's _Rick_!" Rick hated the tenor of his own voice. Petulant and just enough defiance to make it pathetic, "It's _Rick_ you piece of shit! Just fucking kill me if you're gonna do it, huh? Enough of this pretend serial killer bullshit! You watch all the Hannibal Lecter movies before you came into work today, huh? Just fuckin' do it!"  
  
Harvey laughed while Rick struggled to keep his thoughts in order. There was so much pain in his system he thought he would at least start blocking it out, but he felt all of it. He felt the steady pounding in the centre of his skull, and he felt the burning throb in his shoulder and the vicious little tingle on his cheek. He felt his own blood sliding over his skin, and he was helpless to do anything but shout insults at a man whom he'd clearly misread from day one.  
  
"You don't get it yet, do you?" Harvey was hissing in his ear and Rick strained to lean away from his hot breath. It smelled like Listerine. Had he brushed his fucking teeth for this? What the _fuck_? "You're not going to die down here, Rick."  
  
The words trickled down his spine and Rick felt his gorge rise, but he swallowed hard a few times. His mouth was a little dry. Nobody had fed him or given him appropriate access to water since this bullshit had started, but he couldn't find it in him to be outraged or even appreciate the irony.  
  
He wasn't going to die down here. He should have let himself fall asleep. He should have fallen asleep. Keeping people alive was their speciality down here. Alive through the trauma and the cancer and the unending waking nightmares. Alive and kicking.  
  
He wasn't going to die down here.  
  
Harvey laid a hand on the left side of his face and pressed his fingers hard against the edges of bone around his eye. Rick tried not to blink, tried not to cringe, but he failed.  
  
"Back to business," Harvey said, "I mean this all fits together in a way. This is about appreciation, right? I mean in retrospect, you had a lot, didn't you? Your health, money, a good job, your sight..."  
  
The scalpel came into view and rested on the bottom curve of Rick's cheekbone. There was blood on it already and something about that made things chillingly real. It was one thing to feel the blood, to know it was probably there, but he could see his own blood on the scalpel.  
  
Harvey had the guts to do it. Rick wasn't going to die down here.  
  
He wasn't going to die.  
  
Rick braced himself as best he could. His breathing was short and quick, his hands were balled into fists and his teeth were clenched, his breath coming in and out through his teeth and his nose. Hyperventilating, almost. _Almost_. Maybe he ought to do that. Maybe he'd pass out.  
  
Maybe Harvey would just jab him with adrenaline to keep him awake.  
  
What he expected to happen probably said a lot about who he was. What Rick expected was for Harvey to go nice and slow, to make Rick really squirm and scream and beg as he meandered towards his eye. Make him really anticipate it. Make him drunk on his own fear.  
  
Harvey wielded the surgical instrument like it was his favorite crayola crayon instead. Rick screamed so loud that the sound actually muffled itself in his own ears. The pain was incomprehensible and he imagined his brain was screaming, too, drowning in the sensations being scraped against his flesh. The scalpel raked bone and shredded flesh and flayed his skin and his eyeball didn't even try to protest, soft jelly parting meekly around the blade.  
  
Even after he'd finished his quick little sketch on Rick's face Rick was still screaming. He was still feeling it, still feeling the echoes of the pain as his body tried to make some kind of sense of all the distressing information. He jerked frantically against his restraints, but if they could hold down a six foot one million ex-military guy they could hold down a slightly pudgy business man. Adrenaline meant nothing. In his mind’s eye he burst through the restraints and flew at Harvey like a bat out of hell but reality disagreed with him wholesale. Even with his entire body drunk on adrenaline they were still magnetized restraints. They didn't care about dramatic flair.  
  
They didn't feel anything at all.  
  
But Rick did.  
  
His screams wound down into choked sobs, and the wetness streaming from his right eye was only tears. Big, fat, pathetic tears that he couldn't stop and couldn't wipe away. They trickled down into his mouth, mingling with snot and saliva and blood.  
  
"Please," Rick garbled, "Oh, fuck, please don't."  
  
"You know what I _should've_ done is gone for your tongue," Harvey said. There was something hard and mean in his voice now, a tone he'd never heard from the man before. Not once. He always came off as a slightly clueless idiot, but Rick had fallen for it. Rick was the clueless idiot. Rick was the self-greasing wheel, just another cog in the machine, and now Harvey was squeezing him for every last drop of grease.  
  
He wasn't going to die.  
  
"But hey, we got a lot of time. Man, what a mess."  
  
Harvey was touching his handwork and Rick yelped and cried out, finding it very difficult to grit his teeth when doing so flexed muscles that were severed  or shredded now. The pain was unbearable and he smelled piss. He told himself that Harvey had wet himself in his gleeful, boyish excitement, but the damp warmth around his own crotch said otherwise.  
  
There was a _tugging_ sensation and more pain, and Harvey let out a little hiss of pleasure.  
  
"God, it's like peeling off dead skin from a sunburn," he said, "Isn't that satisfying? Fuck me. Wow. Yeah."  
  
Rick's ears were ringing and he kept gagging on his own fluids but he still heard the jangle of a belt and the whisper of a zipper, the faint flapping sound of a guy beating off.  
  
"I win," Harvey hissed, tracing the shredded meat around the ruins of Rick's eye socket, "I win, I win, I win," he dug a finger into the meat and tugged on something that made Rick shriek again. His optic nerve, maybe? Maybe he'd kill him on accident. Harvey wasn't a fucking surgeon. He didn't know what he was doing. He was just a butcher, he was just a fucking psycho, he deserved to be down here not Billy Hope or Chris Walker or... he didn't know the other names because their results were shitty and the irony actually drew a nasty laugh out of him. A nasty, unbalanced laugh that sounded more like breathless shrieks than anything else, "I win, I win, I. Fucking. Win! Shit!"  
  
Something wet slopped against Rick's, something wet and warm and _viscous_ , oozing down towards his mouth and probably into the exposed socket. He couldn't feel anything but pain there. Anything more subtle was ignored by his nerves.  
  
Harvey slapped Rick on the shoulder (where he'd stabbed him, of course where he'd stabbed him) and there was a clink of metal, like he'd carelessly tossed the scalpel away.  
  
"See you tomorrow, Dick," Harvey said.  
  
Some men in scrubs bustled in after him, presumably to stabilize a bleeding, cumstained, piss soaked patient with a pulped up eyeball in a ruined, peeled eyesocket, but Rick didn't notice. He was too busy alternating between hysterical laughter and crying.  
  
He wasn't going to die down here.

**Author's Note:**

> shout out to saturno for inspiring me to write this B)


End file.
